Resilience News

Just days after Hurricane Harvey devastated the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Irma threatens the Caribbean and the southeastern United States. On Monday night, hurricane warnings were in effect as the Category 5 storm moved towards islands including Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Maarten, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The governor of the British Virgin Islands urged residents of Anegada island to evacuate, and schools and government offices were closed across the Caribbean.

Just after Hurricane Harvey threatened the refined fuel supply all along the East Coast with rain that damaged or shut…

One of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in Mexico struck off the country's southern coast, toppling hundreds of buildings and sending panicked people fleeing into the streets in the middle of the night. At least 61 people were reported dead. The quake that hit minutes before midnight Thursday was strong enough to cause buildings to sway violently in the capital city more than 650 miles (1,000 kilometers) away. As beds banged against walls, people still wearing pajamas ran out of their homes and gathered in frightened groups.

In the city of Chelsea, a suburb north of Boston, one of New England’s most critical food facilities lies in a flood zone. Along with Massachusetts General Hospital facilities, a substation and an MBTA stop, the New England Produce Center (NEPC) rests just along the Mystic River in an area that was once marshland, and is at risk of being reclaimed by the river in the event of a major storm.

A weakened but still dangerous Irma pushed inland Monday as it hammered Florida with winds and floodwaters that created hazards even for rescuers trying to help beleaguered residents. Irma was downgraded to a tropical storm over Florida, but it still had winds near hurricane force. Its outer bands were also blowing into Georgia, where the storm's center was expected to arrive later in the day. With rough conditions persisting across Florida, many communities in Irma's wake feared what destruction would be revealed as daylight allowed authorities to canvass neighborhoods.

With weather events becoming more intense, society needs to be better prepared – and think about what can be done in advance, in order to “bake in” resilience. Global Resilience Institute Founding Director Dr. Stephen Flynn shared these thoughts on Monday, during NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook.

As Irma weakened into a tropical storm early Monday morning, almost 6.7 million homes and businesses were left without power in Florida.

Global Resilience Institute Founding Director Dr. Stephen Flynn joined ‘The President’s Inbox’ podcast on Tuesday, to discuss resilience – what is it, why is it important, and how is it relevant in our nation today? “The concept of resilience really gets at a number of elements of how we have to deal with the growing shocks and disruptions of our lives,” said Flynn. “One element of resilience is the capacity to withstand a disruptive event or a shock – that’s what engineers often think about, building to be resilient against the ground moving from an earthquake – but resilience is also about this ability to bounce back or recover. So after a shock or after a major disruption, you’re able to get back up. But very importantly, another element of this evolving definition of resilience is this capacity to adapt. When you bounce back you should come back better and stronger. It’s what you should do before bad things happen, what you do after, and how you learn from that.”

Dr. Stephen Flynn, Founding Director of the Global Resilience Institute, spoke with The Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday about the factors making recent storms so costly, disruptive -- and catastrophic.

The head of the National Flood Insurance Program said Wednesday early estimates show Hurricane Harvey will result in about $11 billion in payouts to insured homeowners, mostly in southeast Texas. That would likely put Harvey as the second costliest storm in the history of the federal insurance program, said Roy E. Wright, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's deputy associate administrator for insurance and mitigation. More than $16 billion was paid out after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Emergency workers around hurricane-scarred Florida worked to make sure elderly residents were safe, evacuating multiple assisted-living facilities, after eight people died in a sweltering nursing home that lost its air conditioning in the storm. In one of the latest actions to protect older residents, firefighters helped relocate 122 people late Wednesday from two assisted living centers near Orlando that had been without power since Hurricane Irma.

A homemade bomb exploded on a packed London subway train during rush hour on Friday, leaving 22 people injured, police and health officials said. None of the injured is thought to be seriously hurt. Police say the explosion was a terrorist attack, the fifth in Britain this year. Britain's domestic spy agency is helping out in the investigation.